townsville - day 2

DAY 2 - 23 Aug

Woke up 7:30 today, had tea and cereal for breakfast. Wrote in my journal a bit. Had morning smoko (snack) of toasted with avocado, tomato and balsamic vinegar. Showered, hit The Strand with P and wandered around a bit. Then lunch: sandwich of spicy salami, Jarlsberg chz, sundried tom, artichoke hearts and fresh tomato on a hard roll. Next we hit the Reef HQ aquarium for two hours - I had to see what animals I'm going to encounter out there on the reef! Afternoon smoko of a banana and Orange-mango flavored sparkly mineral water. P & I walked around downtown for a while to check things out and take photos. It looks as though the city is trying to attract residents, they are building new condos and apts all over the place, esp near the water. In the evening we went to Nikki's house for snacks and drinks. Three of her friends were there, including Kevin the guy she is dating (it was the family's first time meeting him). Everyone had a good amount of wine (I was having water that night) and we got around to telling a funny story - the kind where someone starts and then the next person adds more to the story, etc, going around the circle. This is what we came up with:

"The other day I was walking through the rainforest and I saw an opossum. It went "Aahh!" so I went "Aahh!" and the strangler fig got me and I died. Then I said "Holy crap!" and when I woke up I was looking face-to-face with a shark. And I realized that St. Peter had brought me back to earth. So I decided to have a glass of wine. But one wasn't enough so I had another. Then I had 2 bottles (snort). And then 6 bottles (snort). Then I started running out of the rainforest and I realized that I was running on the wrong side of the street, but I was in Australia and was actually on the right side of the street! Then I saw a sign that said "Skippy" and it's eyes were HUGE and it said "Aahh!" because a semi was coming at it. So then I hopped on its back and rode it. But then I got cold so I went up front and jumped in its pouch to warm up."

NOTE TO READERS: one of Nikki's friends, Kim, she snorts a lot when she laughs, hence the snorts added to the story - the wine was still being consumed and the laughing was getting more intense! - and the colors are the different people, if you didn't already get that, and a few dropped out at the end :)

Wildlife spotted:
(in the wild)
- Silver gulls
- Masked lapwing plovers
- Magpie larks aka PeeWee larks b/c of their 'Pee-o-wit' song
- Laughing Kookaburras
- House Sparrows
- Australian Brush Turkeys.

(in the aquarium)
- Moray eels (Starry, Yellow margin, Zebra)
- Angelfish
- Barramundi Cod
- Trout (Coronation, Bar-cheeked Coral)
- Starfish (Crown of thorns &...)
- Sea cucumbers (Beachball, Prickly red, Burnt sausage &...)
- Coralfish (Beaked &...)
- Fire dartfish
- Flashlight fish (lives in comeplete dark and communicate by blinking their "flashlights" that are located below their eyes)
- Shrimp
- Pineapple fish (has bioluminescent bacteria that live below its eyes, they glow!)
- Nautilus (only 2 species left in the world, life span ~16 yrs, taking 5-10 yrs to mature, lay ~12 eggs per yr, taking 14 months to hatch)
- Redtooth trigger fish
- Moorish Idol
- Royal Dottyback
- Wrasse (Lunar, Striped cleaner &...)
- Sea Urchin (mouth is called 'Aristotle's lantern' on one of them)
- Ray (Blue spotted, Giant shovelnose)
- Razorfish (these guys float upside-side vertically in the water and move up and down all day!)
- Giant trevally
- Sea snakes (Hardwick's, Olive &...) VENOMOUS
- Red firefish VENOMOUS
- Estuarine stonefish (most venomous fish in the world!) VENOMOUS
- Scorpionfish (blends in with light-colored coral and sand on the ocean bottom) VENOMOUS

...of course there are many more, but these were some of the most beautiful and dangerous that I could find the names for. I left out the sharks and green sea turtles. I'll be seeing much more once I'm down there...